About this episode

Kerre Woodham discusses alternatives to capitalism and MMP in the context of societal challenges and the social contract theory proposed by Thomas Hobbes.

The fact that life is a bit of a grind for many people, and has been for some time, means we start to question the natural order of things. When you can pay your bills, have time to spend doing what you enjoy with the people you love, when there aren't glaring inequities, when the failure of the present system and the people who run it aren't up in your face, when you don't see homeless people and beggars and violence, then everything's good. You accept the status quo; things are chugging along nicely. Democracy, capitalism, everybody's getting their fair share, everything's fine.  But when things start to go wrong, and go wrong the Western world over, you start to wonder. Thomas Hobbes was a 17th century political philosopher who formulated the social contract theory, whereby people collectively agree —you'll remember this from your political theory studies back in the days of yore— to surrender some of their individual freedoms and transfer their power to a central absolute authority. In exchange, that authority —in this case our government— provides security, maintains order, and guarantees the preservation of life. In modern life, we've wanted a bit more than the…

People in this episode

Host: Kerre Woodham

Topics covered

• capitalism
• MMP
• social contract
• political philosophy
• inequities
• democracy

Keywords

• capitalism
• MMP
• Thomas Hobbes
• social contract
• democracy
• inequities
• political philosophy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Newstalk ZB

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